Sep 14 Special Delivery

"Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:" (Acts 2:23)

Correlation and causation

It's almost as if Peter is saying that God the Father took Jesus as far as He could and then left it to those, the "men of Judaea" (2:14) to whom Peter spoke. I.e. everyone. Peter continues with "Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden of it." (2:24) This is deep. It's almost as if, by analogy, you could say the Father led His Son up to the shore of the abyss in which Jesus set foot and was then pulled under by a current from which no one could hope to escape.

The Greek word "ekdotos" is translated in the top verse as "delivered". The plan of God in sending Jesus to die for our sin is multi-faceted and off the brilliance scale of humanity. That the Father would prepare a means of escape from the problem of sin in allowing the very vehicle through which sin entered this plane (i.e. the human body), be the one that carried its savior--is amazing. This is the idea of "being delivered". It's different than this, though:

"Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, And shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify Him: and the third day He shall rise again." (Matthew 20:18-19, emphasis mine)

Be all, end all

The idea behind this "deliverance" is in the will of those who couldn't stand to see Jesus live day in and out doing the things He did. Shaming the system, freeing the captives, proclaiming the true God. They couldn't stand it and wanted Him dead--off this earth. Is it too simple to say that it just so happened that the two incidents of "deliverance" coincided with one another? While one could say that, the conclusion to which they've arrived is chock full of the aforementioned plan of God in which all the strings of time and space are wound tight and braided in ways only God sees and has access to. It's simple for Him. And special for us.